Sunside Sunset Jazz Club

From the way Dylan still talks of this experience, I can tell that this was his favorite night of the trip. We purchased tickets at the Sunside Sunset Jazz Club online to see Cecil Recchia, Patrick Cabon, Mauro Gargano and David Grebil perform 'Songs of the free: A tribute to Ahmad Jamal." To our surprise, and delight, all of the songs were sung in English so we understood probably more than most of the audience.  The singer, Cecil L. Recchia is a native French speaker, but when she sang we did not detect a French accent of any kind.  The set list was so fun and exciting and the room matched the music. It was a tiny room with brick walls and chairs packing the area. We were practically sitting on top of the piano player we were so close to him from the crowd.

The drinks were very inexpensive, probably because everyone had purchased tickets to get into the performance. By this day, we had been in Paris for over a week so we knew the drinks we wanted and we knew how to order them. I ordered the Kir and Dylan ordered the Ricard.

Anyone venturing to Paris needs to stop in to Sunside Sunset Jazz Club for a night. It is exciting, energetic and fulfills your need for Paris Jazz.

French Cooking: Farmers Market

I am a huge advocate of shopping local. The French live the 'shop local' motto at all times. Everyone shops at their local farmers market and supports their areas local goods.  The best farmers market is on Boulevard Raspail known for their Bio Marche(Organic Market).  We dragged ourselves out of bed early on Sunday morning to head for the market. Luckily we arrived early because the market was very popular by noon and it was hard to get through any of the lines.

The cheese at the farmers market was the best.  The women that worked at the cheese farm were cutting the blocks of cheese and scooping fresh cheese into molds while on location at the farmers market. The women passed out cheese samples and ate some themselves while they worked, but even after a few samples there were so many amazing cheeses available it was hard to pick. We ended up with a goat cheese circle and a chunk of bleu that smelled pungently lovely.

The vegetables at the farmers market were beautiful.  They had an abundance of every type of vegetable available at that time of the year.  We decided to purchase tomatoes, basil, asparagus, mushrooms, shallots, and fresh locally made angel hair pasta.

French Cooking: Hors D'Oeuvres

After wandering around in museums for hours and hours, sometimes the last thing we wanted to do was go to the store, prepare a meal, and then create a labor intensive meal. Instead, we would prepare no cook hors d'oeuvres that would make us full without the mound of dishes to wash.  Dylan and I are both agree that one of our main staples is an amazing cheese.  Below are some of the amazing cheeses that we were able to get from various locations. Going to pick out the cheese at the farmers market or local fromagerie was just as much of an adventure as eating the cheese.  Below are some of our plated suggestions for no cook hors d'oeuvres.

How to pick out a cheese in Paris, when you don't know French: This is simple, just trust that any cheese will be amazing. If you know you like bleu, it is easy to identify by looking at it. With its unique blue color and crumbling feature it is hard to go wrong with a bleu. It also helps that blue=bleu in French, so they will be able to understand you.  Just use your hands to demonstrate how much you would like, since saying aloud how many kilos you want can be difficult and could result in a very large piece! Goat cheese is very popular and is usually prepared in a cirlce, square or another shape in a small portion, so you can order un (one), duex (two), or trois (three) without confusion.

Farmers Market Cheese
Left cheese: Goat- soft and creamy with earthy taste
Right cheese: Blue- soft with crumbles with tangy taste

Farmers Market: Fresh Goat Cheese

Barthélemy Fromagerie: Mimolette cheese- hard with nut flavor

Farmers market: Olives and artichokes in olive oil sauce

Fromagerie near Sacré Cœur: Goat cheese with spices 

Carrefour: Rosé- very popular in summer months, served cold
La Fertoise: Baguette 

La Cave à la Bastille: Côtes de Rhônes
Carrefour: Cheese

French Cooking: Artichoke

On our first day, we arrived to our apartment at around 10 a.m.  After several hours of sleep, Dylan and I made ourselves get up to explore the neighborhood and gather supplies for dinner.  Down the street from our place, we found a grocery store that had everything we needed, the Carrefour. We became very good customers at the local Carrefour throughout our two week trip.  There we picked up an artichoke, box of pasta, onion, garlic, butter, prosciutto, a baguette and a bottle of 2012 Côtes du Rhône featured below.

Artichoke Recipe: 

3 tbsp Butter

1/2 Onion diced 

3 Garlic cloves diced

1 Artichoke

2 Pinches of salt

Prep: Cut the rough top off the artichoke off with a knife.  Then using kitchen scissors cut the point off each leaf. For help with this step please see bottom of the page for Martha Stewart's video link.

Cook Artichoke: Boil a large pot of water, salted. Once boiling place the artichoke and cook for about 25 minutes, until the leaves come off easily when pulled.

Sauce: Heat the butter in a saucepan. Add the onion and stir on medium to high heat. When the onions begin to caramelize, add the garlic. Overall cook time around 12 minutes.

Combine: Place the artichoke top side down in a bowl or serving dish. Pour the butter mixture on top of the artichoke being sure to cover all areas so it can soak in the butter.

Eat: Pull off the leaves and soak up any onion and butter mixture. Pull the first few layers of green from the inner portion of the leaves. Once all the leaves have been eaten, the artichoke heart will be in the bottom center and can be eaten. The heart is the best part, so don't forget about it! 

http://www.marthastewart.com/973766/how-prepare-artichoke-steaming#973766

Museum: Louvre

Going to the Louvre is not something that can be done without a full nights rest, a full stomach and a couple of espresso before entering.  The Louvre is a massive museum that not only has art work in frames and sculptures on display, but also has intricately designed artwork on the walls and ceilings.  Ones head does not know where to turn upon entering a new room and must spin in a three hundred and sixty degree circle to make sure to see everything there is to see. The volume of historic artwork on display was astounding. Throughout our time exploring, we kept adding billions of dollars onto our guess of how much money sat on the Louvre property.  

When our day began, we ate a large breakfast and entered the Louvre. We headed straight for the Mona Lisa in order to make sure to see the painting and check it off our list of must sees. After walking several flights of stairs and what felt like several miles (there is not air conditioning available in a lot of the areas) we made it to the mob taking selfies with the tiny painting of Mona Lisa in the background. It is in a fireproof case about ten feet away from the rope that blocks anyone from coming any closer, so it is even tinier looking than it already actually is. 

After this trek, we were ready for another. We did not yet know how to read the map so we wandered around and walked up and down random corridors. It did not seem like it took that long, but we looked at our watches after a while and several hours had already passed! We decided to head to the sculpture section to see the Venus de Milo. Once we were done walking throw the sculptures, we decided to head to see the Apartments of Napoleon III. 

When we had completed half of the apartment tour, we noticed our blood sugar was severely low and checked our watches, another several hours had gone by without our knowing. We walked quickly out of the museum area and into the lounge/restaurant section to open our Cliff bars and eat them before we melted from exhaustion and lack of glucose.  We decided to take another run through the museum and look around before we left and found the Monet and other Impressionist paintings.  By the time we were done, we couldn't wait to find internet to find the value of the Louvre.  We looked it up, but online there are only guesses and estimations. 

Roman Catholic Churches: Notre Dame

Photo: Colleen Fulmer: Exterior Notre Dame

Dylan and I passed by Notre Dame every single day of our two and a half week adventure. Each time, there was a thirty minute line of tourists waiting to enter the building. Each day we would say "tomorrow, the line will the shorter, we can go inside then." But then we woke up on the last full day we had in Paris and we still had not gone inside! We made it a priority to make Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris our first stop on the last day.

The line went rather quickly, and once you were inside you were able to stay as long as you like. As we did in each church we went to while in Paris, we sat in the prayer area and thought of all family and friends that needed a prayer at the enchanting Notre Dame.

Dylan and I decided that we did not want to go to the top of the building (this was a several hour wait), instead we wanted to spend our time exploring inside the building.  We stared at the stained glass windows for a long period of time, they display every color in a beautiful pattern.

Here are some of the photos we were able to capture of Cathédrale Notre Dame de Paris:

Photo: Dylan Fulmer: Interior Notre Dame

Photo: Colleen Fulmer: Exterior Notre Dame

Photo: Colleen Fulmer: Interior Notre Dame

Photo: Colleen Fulmer: Interior Notre Dame

Photo: Colleen Fulmer: Interior Notre Dame

Roman Catholic Churches: Sacré Cœur

Dylan and I were able to visit three beautiful and legendary churches. La Basilique du Sacré Cœur was our first stop and it was gorgeous inside and out. This church was built on the top of the hill and you are able to see the entire city of Paris from the front steps. If you go to www.sacre-coeur-montmarte.com/english/ you can actually take a 360 degree tour of the building. Due to the technology of today, Dylan and I were able to take photos from our camera we got each other as a wedding gift, our phones, and we also can visit the website with the amazing tour. It is amazing that we do not have to rely on our memory anymore to be able to see the entire building.

 Photo: Colleen and Dylan Fulmer: Sacré Cœur

Photo: Colleen Carlsen: View from Sacré Cœur

Photo: Colleen Carlsen: View from Sacré Cœur

Photo: Colleen and Dylan Fulmer: Sacré Cœur

Photo: Dylan Fulmer: Colleen Taking a Photo of Sacré Cœur

Bringing Paris Back to the USA

It can be difficult coming off the vacation high and back to reality. Especially when the day to day things that you enjoyed while on vacation, may not be readily available in North America.

Espresso: Everywhere in Paris served espresso, from the Opera to the Metro station to of course, restaurants. To remedy our espresso withdrawal, as soon as we arrived home we bought a Nespresso machine with our Target gift cards we received from our wedding. We were able to try the 14 trial espresso flavors that came standard with the machine, and decided on our top five: 1. Dulsao do Brasil 2. Volluto 3. Roma 4. Fortissio Lungo 5. Cosi
Croissants: To get our croissant fix, it was not as easy as logging onto Target.com. Instead, we had to actually make the croissants and I did not know this before, but they take two days! The effort really is worth it because when they come out of the oven they flake apart and the butter is present in each and every bite!
Drinks: This is a easiest of the three! Hemingway and his pals enjoyed sipping on Pernod. Of course this means that Dylan enjoys this a lot as well. This aperitif can be found at most local liquor stores and some grocery stores. One of my favorites was Kir, which is easy to replicate in the US. Kir is white wine with a splash crème de cassis. For a Kir Royal, the fancy version, you replace the white wine for sparkling white!

Monet

Dylan and I had a peaceful yet exciting experience at the Musée de l'Orangerie. At the museum there were two oval shaped rooms that displayed eight very large pieces from Monet's collection of Water Lilies.  It was easy to stay in each room for an hour rotating between the four pieces in each room, to be sure we saw every detail and difference between them.

A few days after the Musée de l'Orangerie we decided to take the thirty minute train to Giverny to see the actual water lilies that inspired the paintings that we had seen at the Musée de l'Orangerie. There was a long line right away, since everyone had arrived on the same train together from Paris. Dylan and I wanted to wait for the line to die down before we went in, so we found a quaint little garden cáfe to drink an espresso and relax. After our caffeine we ventured back to Monet's home and garden.

We fell in love with the grounds and the home. We would love to someday have a similar kitchen to Monet's with blue tile work throughout, wood block counter tops and a big farm basin sink.  We were not allowed to take photos in the home, so we will have to visit again before designing our dream kitchen one day.

The garden, the water lilies, the home etc were so beautiful and it is hard to describe in words, so we will let the photos do the talking.